Bel Bel wrote:hey certainly have a lot more fish in the tanks in the Aquarium Shop.

That is because they don't plan on keeping them in there for long. I like the danios; I also like the puffa; I don't think I said yesterday but he looked really cute in the first photo of him yesterday.

My new tank is 165 litres, although according to the "calculator" on the stupid nasty fish site, it says 130 litres judging by the size...

The new tank I am after is roughly the same size as yours bel bel. I just cant decide if I'd like fish or Axolotl's. The net recons you can get 2 adult axolotls in a 2 foot tank....HOWEVER they can grow to 12" in length - I don't know if I'd be happy having them look squashed. So I don't know whether to just get fish; I like the betta fish (male), male guppies and maybe a mini puffer (after copying bel bel).

The puffa is really lovely but quite gentle and slow. Some of my fish actually take blood worm out of puffas mouth as he tries to eat. He is quite slow so we have to make sure the blood worm gets dropped right next to him to ensure he gets any. I distract the other fish with a pinch of dry food at the opposite end of the tank from puffa and quickly put in the blood worm next to puffa. He doesn't eat dry food so we have to try and ensure he gets the blood worm but of course the other fish love it too

If I had known the filiment barbs where so active/boystrous I wouldn't have got them (we were told they weren't like normal barbs - certainly that is true with our rosey barbs and our cherrys so we had no reason to disbeleive what we were told). They can knock any fish out of the way when trying to get to food. They are ok the rest of the time

I forgot I also have a sidemunthink (something like that anyway). He is black and white. Some kind of loach - hopefully Snail will know what I am trying to explain. I will try to get a pic as he has a really unusually design to his body.

I love the siamese fighters (betta). We have had a few of them over the years.

Our puffa nips flappy tails so might not be a good idea to put them together with the siamese or the guppies.

It's ok, I don't know anywhere local that sells small puffer fish; only the big ones.

I feed my newts blood worm and the frozen stuff stinks - thing is they only eat a few blood worms per feeding and they are fed every 2 days (and that is too much; but I want to make sure both are eating properly before putting them on 3 day feedings). The bigger newt has ate properly for the last 2 feedings; he is a right gutsy; I dangle a worm in front of him and you can see him looking, then he'll keep looking and looking and eventually eat it; then the next ones almost get snatched away straight away. I also have packet stuff and dried blood worms to try them on in a while (so there is less wastage).

My issue with the siamese fighters is that people have said they can nip the guppies tails...IF I got one and he did bite them I'd have no where to put him and I wouldn't want to take him back . But I also fancy an axolotl HOWEVER have a look at this for a big one...http://www.axolotl.org/rearing.htm (second picture on the right). It's HUGE....you can't keep one of those in a small tank, even though it says you can...it just looks so uncomfortable .

Bel, your tank sounds at least fully stocked, it's difficult to say without knowing all the sizes. The main point about stocking is water quality, therefore everybody 'counts'. However, there is also the issue of territories, which is what is meant by saying your bottom-feeders don't count, but they only don't count to the top-feeders - they count amongst themselves.

Bel Bel wrote:They certainly have a lot more fish in the tanks in the Aquarium Shop.

So many people say that, which is why overstocking is a common problem - people have an unrealistic idea of what a fish tank should look like, based on shops. Shop tanks are filtered in a different way - essentially about 75% of the tank is hidden from view, and all the fish are in the 25% that you can see.

Stocking is not an exact science, but you can have a maximum of 2cm of fish per litre if you have a very good filter. But this is square centimetres, so a fish 1cm long by 1cm wide by 1cm tall counts as 1 cm, but a fish 1cm long, 1cm wide and 2 cm tall counts as 2cm.

Your puffer will need more in his diet than bloodworm in the long run if he is to survive. Try live or frozen brine shrimp, live river shrimp, live aquatic snails (preferably cultured by yourself, not wild), frozen mussels, frozen cockles (without the shell), small frozen crabs, terrestrial insects (that haven't been sprayed with anything), and earthworms.

These mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb.

My boyfriend got 12 danios at the weekend; 7 zebra and 5 leopard - we wanted 5 of each but the man said we could have a free one and he accidentally put another one in with a big one and I forgot to point it out .

One died yesterday it had only been in the tank for a few hours as well so my bf is off today to get another fish. The rest all seemed fine. The man in the shop said...if any die remember I gave you a free one...yea right, what do these shops ever do for anyone???

We do give the fish live food once a week at the moment. I will take on board what you have said about feeding the puffa.I think the tank space is ok at the moment and there doesn't seem to be any fighting. The kribenis do their tug of war but not all day and keep to their own sides of the tank most of the time. It's just when they are both hanging around in the middle they let each other know about their territories. Our filter is very good and our water quality is always excellent. My hubby is very strict about checking it and doing water changes and filter changes exactly when he is supposed to.The reason we wanted to remove the filiment barbs was because they got big really quick and it did worry us about the room in the tnak. However from your calculations I think we are just about ok in terms of space. I would still like to remove the filiments but we just can't catch them.

We went to clacton at the weekend for my grandas brother 100th birthday and we popped into the piers aquarium. They had some fantastic fish, rays, mini shark, star fish, crab and some baby turtles. We couldn't believe how samll they were. Ours started the size of a 50p but it's hard to remeber that now he is so big. My ones body is about 5" accross now. They had a fish with crab legs. I have never seen anything like it. It wasn't labelled, do you know what it might be Snail. It was orange, blue and silver. It wasn't a lobster as they had one of those too. It really looked like a fish rather than a crustation of any kind.

It was probably some type of gurnard, a native species. I couldn't say which species though. The first rays of the pectoral fins have adapted to become structural supports and to taste the sea bed for food (they have sensory cells on them). It is indeed a fish like any other. There's a piccy here: